Worldie wrote:You forget asian people are by nature more farmer oriented (as proved by the kind of MMOs that go well there) and will be happy to raid twice the time per week.

This is often brought up when people talk about the differences in player profile between the east and the west.

Disregarding professional farmers and the odd unemployed NEET dudes who die in front of their computers. One thing people have not considered is that online gaming generally is targeted at a much younger market in the east. The majority of players in WOW consisted of high school and varsity students, with working adults being a relative minority.

There are two main reasons for this. Gaming has been traditionally "for the kids", and because working hours are generally longer, meaning adults most often cannot make significant time investments, a "mature/serious adult" would not play games. (This is slowly changing after South Korea's success in the gaming industry, but not by much outside of South Korea.) This led the game companies to target their MMOs at students, devising a different billing scheme: point cards sold at convenience stores with which students can easily buy game time in small increments (X bucks per hour). An MMO like WOW requiring a credit card for billing is simply not going to work here.

Most MMOs operating in Taiwan and China give out their software for free. Then usually you can buy game time in increments of about USD$5.00; this, and the already immature player population, further reinforces the idea that gaming is for immature kids. Since most of the players are students and have time to spend, it creates the appearance that Asians like to farm.

For Taiwan, since we have conscription, players graduating from school are forcibly cut off from the game, creating an artificial cut-off point for gamers. After we are discharged, we've already got used to not playing games and the priorities naturally change to work.

Anyways, the idea that Asians "like" to farm is a result of interaction between various non-gaming factors. For us, hearing someone say that is like hearing someone say the Japanese eat sushi everyday, or that Americans all carry guns everyday. Yes, some do, but it is wrong to say that it's in the nature of the people.

I was never under the impression that Asians "liked" to farm, but that's the way their games are generally set up, making them far more accustomed to it. So when it happens to a game like WoW, they just shrug and move on.* US/EU aren't used to grindy games (and like to complain) so it naturally leads to thread discussions like these.

Now, whether the games are set up that way for Asians because of how the billing works, or the billing is set up because that's how the games are, is anyone's guess.

*Disclaimer: This is how it appears to me. This may or may not actually be the case.

To stereotype South Korean gamers somewhat, they really like feeling "elite" and go crazy for vanity items and activities like raiding and arena. Most of them also play at internet cafes. At a buck an hour, I imagine racking up far more than 15 bucks every month just doing all the ridiculous timesinks a raider has to do to be competitive, yet still only have access to one lockout's worth of gear? This is just an experimental compromise to make the game a better monetary trade-off in that environment and probably will never have anything to do with people who pay a sub.

Yeah, there's still the idea of a World First, even though we get our updates two days later than the US realms (our weekly maintenance take place on Thursdays). Looking on the bright side, we get more assurances because the most fatal bugs would have been hotfixed by the time we get our update.

Item UpgradesPatch 5.1 will finally implement the item upgrade system that first appeared in beta. The same frame is being used now, with a background that matches the other Ethereal frames, making it likely that this will be another function performed by our Ethereal friends. The window title still says Valor Upgrade, but the game has support for Valor, Conquest, Justice, and Honor points upgrades.

It appears all items that are upgradeable can be upgraded by 8 item levels, but Conquest and Valor points will do it in two steps rather than all at once. The currency used to upgrade an item is set per item, so you cannot use Honor to upgrade Valor Points gear or any other type than what is set for the item.

Source: MMO-champion

The way it seems to work is that you use JP for a single upgrade on Rare quality items -- ie, a 463 ilvl item to 471, whereas VP is used for Epic quality items, having them go from 489 -> 493 -> 497

Item UpgradesPatch 5.1 will finally implement the item upgrade system that first appeared in beta. The same frame is being used now, with a background that matches the other Ethereal frames, making it likely that this will be another function performed by our Ethereal friends. The window title still says Valor Upgrade, but the game has support for Valor, Conquest, Justice, and Honor points upgrades.

It appears all items that are upgradeable can be upgraded by 8 item levels, but Conquest and Valor points will do it in two steps rather than all at once. The currency used to upgrade an item is set per item, so you cannot use Honor to upgrade Valor Points gear or any other type than what is set for the item.

Source: MMO-champion

So... what about raid drops? what do you use to upgrade those?

So 8 ilvls would cost you 1500 Valor, which would push a 489 to a 497... ehh... I'll do it when I have the valor sitting there, but not going to Internet-Cafe myself to grind valor to upgrade everything. Probably will save it for weapons.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

As a casual player who don't raid every week, my priorities for valor would be to first purchase all the gear I need for the current tier, and only use it to upgrade gear when I'm about to cap valor at 3000 and absolutely have to spend it.

Can't speak for the serious raiders, but I would imagine the same. The fact that there's a weekly valor cap limits our options and forces us to spend our valor in the most efficient way possible. For raiders, it probably means spending it first on off-spec gear, and then upgrade the BiS stuff.

Serious raiders will have pretty much everything they might need from Valor within a month. Since this is in 5.1, serious raiders already have everything they might possibly buy from Valor, with maybe one purchase or two left in the next week. Upgrading items will pretty much be the par.

What about 476 raid finder gear? It might be a waste since you could just save up and buy the 489 piece outright. But depending on itemization/just eeking out one last upgrade before the weekly raid, might not be that bad of a use. Anyway, is 476 gear going to be upgradeable also?

Stubblerump wrote:What about 476 raid finder gear? It might be a waste since you could just save up and buy the 489 piece outright. But depending on itemization/just eeking out one last upgrade before the weekly raid, might not be that bad of a use. Anyway, is 476 gear going to be upgradeable also?

So when a new tier comes out you'll have higher itemlevel gear that drops even from the heroic version, mean upgrades won't be upgrades until you have enough valor and with Valor having a small cap you can't stockpile it.

Lastwolf wrote:So when a new tier comes out you'll have higher itemlevel gear that drops even from the heroic version, mean upgrades won't be upgrades until you have enough valor and with Valor having a small cap you can't stockpile it.

Kinda lame, but I'll be doing it like a chump.

?

If you Valor ilvl increase 476 gear, it'll still be less ilvl than Normal mode gear from THIS tier, let alone next tier's Normal Mode items (which will probably be 508?).

Potentially, if you are completely decked out in Heroic gear from this tier (502), bump that 8ilvl (to 510) you'd have to do one upgrade to go from 508 to 512 or whatever, but chances are - the new tier's pieces will have better itemisation, better procs or more sockets anyway.

Does this mean they will raise the weekly Valor cap as well? As things are going for me, doing my dailies and stepping into LFR twice a week has me reach the cap without ever setting foot in a heroic. For the sake of argument assume we're starting at 0/3000 Valor, this also means that we can upgrade 1 item the first week, a 2nd one on week 2 and item 3 & 4 on week 3, which resets your Valor back to 0/3000.

Seeing as tankadins have 16 slots that can benifit from upgrades, this means 32 upgrades, or 32/4*3 = 24 weeks or rougly 6 months of spending VP... which seems odd...

This is a hypothetical scenario, based on the fact that I'm no longer fulltime raiding on my pally, but I still want to be there when I'm needed... and I want her to be geared decently...

I struggle to reach the valor cap as it is. I can't be alone in wanting the number of heroics and dailies I do to decrease as I move into raiding more, but the way rewards are arranged it's hard to cap without at least running a bunch of heroics. (When I was doing all the dailies because of rep then the valor cap was no issue at all. No way I could maintain that level of dailies throughout the expansion, though. I hated it.)

Looks like the number of valor upgrades you could get will be low in any case. They're also adding more rep items on the new factions, so could be even more items to spend valor on, too.

Its really weird - the first few weeks of being 90 I capped my weekly valor friday or saturday (EU, wed reset here, so thursday/friday for US). Now I'm finding myself planning on doing daily random heroics for the bonus 40 VP for the run, and still having to do one on tuesday before the reset to cap valor. I'm considering "maining" and alt that hasn't done all teh reps yet, just so I can get the 50% buff by friday/saturday so I have to do less on my main. The buff really loses value when you have to main an alt to get capped on your main without too much hassle.

Yeah, I find the valor cap kind of obnoxious to hit as well, now that I'm almost done with the reps. I've taken to doing a daily scenario and heroic (I'm a hunter now, so the scenario fits almost perfectly with the heroic queue time when I queue for both at the same time). That gets me (80+40)*7=840 valor, which when combined with dailies and LFR is more than I need in the week so I can be lazy and skip a day or a run. Remember this week there's a third LFR, so that's an extra bit to factor in.